Waiting for the Bungalow Bar Man

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

My late paternal grandparents, Edward Martin Droleskey, a detective sergeant in the City of New York Police Department, and Adrienne Delfausse Droleskey, lived most of their married lives at 92-39 219th Street in Queens Village, New York, into which they moved in 1922 after living in Woodhaven, Queens, New York, for about six years:

92-39 219th Street, Queens Village, Borough of Queens, City of New York, State of New York. (House still standing after eighty-six years.)

 

My grandparents would sit in a room that was actually an enclosed porch to the left of the front door (as can be seen above), reminiscing back in the 1950s for hours upon hours on end about the "good old days" of the second and third decades of the Twentieth Century. Although both were cradle Catholics (my grandfather was born in Bodine, Pennsylvania, near Elmira, New York, on August 10, 1884; my grandmother was born in Brooklyn, New York, in June of 1890), they never talked about the Faith during their long hours of reminiscences about the "good old days" as they sat around waiting for the Bungalow Bar ice cream man to arrive jingling the bells signaling his arrival in their neighborhood and/or as they awaited the arrival of the Krug's man to deliver various baked goods to their door from Krug's Bakery--and sometimes the Dugan's man to arrive (Dugan's Bakery was a competitor of Krug's, and was actually headquartered on Springfield Boulevard in Queens Village, a location that is now a bus depot for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority).

Well, here's a photograph of a Bungalow Bar truck.

 

My paternal grandparents were not atypical for blue-collar American Catholics of their generation. They were thorough-going naturalists who were immersed in the world and who delighted in the tales of the past. Although I did have an appreciation for the past as a small boy, I knew that my grandparents' reminiscences were much exaggerated, and that they were wasting their time dwelling upon the past when they could have been using their time more productively as they lost their minds with all of the living in the past.

Well, you see, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who has esteemed the symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands and who has dared to entered into places of false worship and dared to treat such places as "holy" in the sight of the Most Blessed Trinity, is telling those of us who are seeking the restoration of Christendom and who are praying for the restoration of the glories of Holy Mother Church, including the restoration of the fullness of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the eradication of the abominable Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service from the face of this earth, are, in effect, "waiting for the Bungalow Bar man" as we waste our time "idolizing" a "past" that never was, a "past" that has come and gone, a "past" that was full of imperfections and flaws, a "past" that has given rise to a new set of circumstances that must be embraced as the "Church" makes adjustments to the realities of "modern man" in a world full of diversity and complexity. We have, according to Ratzinger/Benedict made an "idol" out of the past.

Here is what Ratzinger/Benedict said in a "homily" at a Novus Ordo service in Paris, France, on Saturday, September 13, 2008:

In the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, we discover, in this Pauline year inaugurated on 28 June last, how much the counsels given by the Apostle remain important today. “Shun the worship of idols” (1 Cor 10:14), he writes to a community deeply marked by paganism and divided between adherence to the newness of the Gospel and the observance of former practices inherited from its ancestors. Shunning idols: for Paul’s contemporaries, this therefore meant ceasing to honour the divinities of Olympus, ceasing to offer them blood sacrifices. Shunning idols meant entering the school of the Old Testament Prophets, who denounced the human tendency to make false representations of God. As we read in Psalm 113, with regard to the statues of idols, they are merely “gold and silver, the work of human hands. They have mouths but they do not speak, they have eyes but they do not see, they have ears but they do not hear, they have nostrils but they do not smell” (Ps 113:4-5). Apart from the people of Israel, who had received the revelation of the one God, the ancient world was in thrall to the worship of idols. Strongly present in Corinth, the errors of paganism had to be denounced, for they constituted a powerful source of alienation and they diverted man from his true destiny. They prevented him from recognizing that Christ is the sole, true Saviour, the only one who points out to man the path to God.

This appeal to shun idols, dear brothers and sisters, is also pertinent today. Has not our modern world created its own idols? Has it not imitated, perhaps inadvertently, the pagans of antiquity, by diverting man from his true end, from the joy of living eternally with God? This is a question that all people, if they are honest with themselves, cannot help but ask. What is important in my life? What is my first priority? The word “idol” comes from the Greek and means “image”, “figure”, “representation”, but also “ghost”, “phantom”, “vain appearance”. An idol is a delusion, for it turns its worshipper away from reality and places him in the kingdom of mere appearances. Now, is this not a temptation in our own day – the only one we can act upon effectively? The temptation to idolize a past that no longer exists, forgetting its shortcomings; the temptation to idolize a future which does not yet exist, in the belief that, by his efforts alone, man can bring about the kingdom of eternal joy on earth! Saint Paul explains to the Colossians that insatiable greed is a form of idolatry (cf. 3:5), and he reminds his disciple Timothy that love of money is the root of all evil. By yielding to it, he explains, “some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs” (1 Tim 6:10). Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power and even for knowledge, diverted man from his true Destiny, from the truth about himself?  (English translation of Benedict XVI's "homily" during a service on the Esplanade des Invalides, Paris, France, Saturday, September 13, 2008.)

 

This little bit of poison, dropped into amidst elements of Catholicism, is a not-so-subtle rejoinder to traditionally-minded Catholics that the restoration some of them seek is but an illusion. Indeed, Ratzinger/Benedict said later in later in that same sermon that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ teaches us "to shun idols, the illusions of our minds." Yes, the past is but an illusion, you see, a figment of our imaginations or our flawed memories of simpler, purer and more innocent days that never existed and will never exist in the future. This is pure Modernism as history is viewed through the lens of subjectivism and as the existence of objective facts are put into doubt in order to justify a revolution against the Catholic past as but a necessary remedy to "meet the world" in a spirit of "progress."

Pope Saint Pius X wrote about this quite specifically in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:

Then the philosopher must come in again to enjoin upon the historian the obligation of following in all his studies the precepts and laws of evolution. It is next for the historian to scrutinize his documents once more, to examine carefully the circumstances and conditions affecting the Church during the different periods, the conserving force she has put forth, the needs both internal and external that have stimulated her to progress, the obstacles she has had to encounter, in a word, everything that helps to determine the manner in which the laws of evolution have been fulfilled in her. This done, he finishes his work by drawing up a history of the development in its broad lines. The critic follows and fits in the rest of the documents. He sets himself to write. The history is finished. Now We ask here: Who is the author of this history? The historian? The critic? Assuredly neither of these but the philosopher. From beginning to end everything in it is a priori, and an apriorism that reeks of heresy. These men are certainly to be pitied, of whom the Apostle might well say: "They became vain in their thoughts...professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.'' At the same time, they excite resentment when they accuse the Church of arranging and confusing the texts after her own fashion, and for the needs of her cause. In this they are accusing the Church of something for which their own conscience plainly reproaches them.

The result of this dismembering of the records, and this partition of them throughout the centuries is naturally that the Scriptures can no longer be attributed to the authors whose names they bear. The Modernists have no hesitation in affirming generally that these books, and especially the Pentateuch and the first three Gospels, have been gradually formed from a primitive brief narration, by additions, by interpolations of theological or allegorical interpretations, or parts introduced only for the purpose of joining different passages together. This means, to put it briefly and clearly, that in the Sacred Books we must admit a vital evolution, springing from and corresponding with the evolution of faith. The traces of this evolution, they tell us, are so visible in the books that one might almost write a history of it. Indeed, this history they actually do write, and with such an easy assurance that one might believe them to have seen with their own eyes the writers at work through the ages amplifying the Sacred Books. To aid them in this they call to their assistance that branch of criticism which they call textual, and labor to show that such a fact or such a phrase is not in its right place, adducing other arguments of the same kind. They seem, in fact, to have constructed for themselves certain types of narration and discourses, upon which they base their assured verdict as to whether a thing is or is not out of place. Let him who can judge how far they are qualified in this way to make such distinctions. To hear them descant of their works on the Sacred Books, in which they have been able to discover so much that is defective, one would imagine that before them nobody ever even turned over the pages of Scripture. The truth is that a whole multitude of Doctors, far superior to them in genius, in erudition, in sanctity, have sifted the Sacred Books in every way, and so far from finding in them anything blameworthy have thanked God more and more heartily the more deeply they have gone into them, for His divine bounty in having vouchsafed to speak thus to men. Unfortunately. these great Doctors did not enjoy the same aids to study that are possessed by the Modernists for they did not have for their rule and guide a philosophy borrowed from the negation of God, and a criterion which consists of themselves.

 

Joseph Ratzinger's contempt for the Catholic past that traditionally-minded Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide are said to "idolize" as we reject the "realty" of the present as but a "legitimate development" and cling to "ossified" formula that have become "obsolete" in the particulars in which they contain has been stated many times. He did so quite clearly on June 27, 1990, when presenting a document entitled Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation at a press conference in Rome when he was the prefect of the conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time. (Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6; Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete.)

 

Thus it is that we who hold to the perpetually binding nature of Catholic Social Teaching as enunciated by Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI are "idolizing" the past. That this very characterization is itself an act of apostasy can be seen very clearly by reviewing the papal statements contained in The Binding Nature of Catholic Social Teaching. Pope Saint Pius X must have been worshiping the idol of the past when he wrote the following in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

 

This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo.

 

Did Saint Pius X worship an "idol" that never existed, a mere illusion of his mind, that is, the Catholic City?

Did Pope Leo XIII misrepresent history and/or believe in an illusion when he wrote the following about the Christendom of the Middle Ages, explaining also how Christendom was overthrown?

There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is -- beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.

A similar state of things would certainly have continued had the agreement of the two powers been lasting. More important results even might have been justly looked for, had obedience waited upon the authority, teaching, and counsels of the Church, and had this submission been specially marked by greater and more unswerving loyalty. For that should be regarded in the light of an ever-changeless law which Ivo of Chartres wrote to Pope Paschal II: "When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled, and the Church flourishes, and brings forth abundant fruit. But when they are at variance, not only smaller interests prosper not, but even things of greatest moment fall into deplorable decay."

But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law.

 

No true Catholic historian has ever asserted that any period of the Church's history was free from flaws and shortcomings. Father Denis Fahey, probably one of the best historians Holy Mother Church, has ever known, wrote the following about the constituent elements of true history in his The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

History is concerned with individual and contingent facts. In order to discern the supreme causes and laws of the events which historians narrate, we must stand out from, and place ourselves above these events. To do this with certainty one should, of course, be enlightened by Him Who holds all things in the hollow of His hand. Unaided human reason cannot even attempt to give an account of the supreme interests at stake in the world, for the world, as it is historically, these interests are supernatural.

Human reason strengthened by faith, that is, by the acceptance of the information God has given us about the world through His Son and through the Society founded by Him, can attempt to give this account, though with a lively consciousness of its limitations. It is only when we shall be in possession of the Beatific Vision that the full beauty of the Divine Plan which is being worked out in the world will be visible to us. Until then, we can only make an imperfect attempt at what be, not the philosophy, but the theology of history. The theologian who has the Catholic Faith is in touch with the full reality of the world, and can therefore undertake to show, however feebly and imperfectly, the interplay of the supreme realities of life.

The philosopher, as such, knows nothing about the reality of the divine life of Grace, which we lost by the Fall of our First Parents, and nothing of the Mystical Body of Christ through which we receive back that life. The philosophy of history, if it is to be true philosophy, that is, knowledge by supreme causes, must therefore be rather the theology of history. Yet how few, even among those who have the Catholic Faith, think of turning to the instructions and warnings issued by the representatives of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, when they wish to ascertain the root causes of the present chaotic condition of the world!

 

Father Fahey noted that the very papal documents of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries that are disparaged today by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI are most reliable representations of true history:

The supreme law, illustrated in the actual historical world, is that it is well or ill with it, simply and absolutely (simplicter), in proportion as it accepts or rejects God’s plan for the restoration of our Real Life, the Life of Grace, lost by original sin. The events of our age, as of every age, are in the last analysis, the results of man’s acceptance or rejection of the Divine Plan for ordered human life. They are, therefore, the consequences of the application to action of the ideas of what is order and what is disorder, which have been held by different minds. Accordingly, the appreciation of these events and of their consequences for the future must be based on what we Catholics know by faith about the order of the world, and we must turn, first all, to the documents in which the Vicar of Christ have outlined for us what is in accordance with the Divine Plan and what is opposed to it. The theology of history must therefore never lose sight of Papal pronouncements on the tendencies of an age or its spirit. Now, one such outstanding pronounce with regard to the political order of our day is the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, and it is my intention to lay particular stress on it. The study is rendered more attractive by the fact that the enemies of the Catholic Church attack this Papal document continually. For example, the French Masonic review, L’Acacia (November 1930), published the Syllabus with an introduction, of which a portion runs as follows:

"We have considered it well to publish again the text of the famous Syllabus, which has become almost impossible to find. As the Church does not wish the Syllabus to be subjected to the judgments and criticisms of the Catholics of the present day, she has systematically bought up and burned the copies in the vernacular which were being offered for sale."

These statements are needless to say, foul calumnies of the Catholic Church in the usual Masonic style. The Church is only too anxious that the Syllabus should be well known to Catholics. Pope Leo XIII, the successor of Pope Pius IX, alludes to it in the following terms: ‘. . . Pius IX branded publicly many false opinions which were gaining ground and afterwards ordered them to be considered in summary form, in order that, in this sea of error, Catholics might have a light that they might safely follow.’ (Encyclical Letter, Immortale Dei, 1885.)

 

Who is the true counter-historian who considers the false idol of the "Second" Vatican Council as a "countersyllabus"? Who do you think?

Let us be content to say here that the text [of Gaudium et Spes] serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is akin to a political demagogue who distorts the past and misrepresents the aims of his adversaries in order to justify his own revolutionary goals and his rank misrepresentation of history and the truths of the Faith. No one possessed of the sensus Catholicus "romanticizes" the past. A Catholic possessed of the sensus Catholicus understands that the specific set of circumstances that existed once in time will never be replicated exactly. What is necessary, however, is for there to be a restoration of the Catholic spirit that animated the Christendom of the Middle Ages, a spirit in which the average person lived in light and die with First and Last Things constantly in mind, seeking to glorify God in his daily work despite his own sins and failings and amidst the sins and failings of his fellow men.

Father Fahey explained this in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

In proportion as the Mystical Body of Christ was accepted by mankind, political and economic thought and action began to respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church, endowed, as she is, with the right of intervention in temporal affairs whenever necessary, because of her participation in the spiritual Kingship of Christ. Thus the natural or temporal common good of States came to be sought in a manner calculated to favour the development of true personality, in and through the Mystical Body of Christ, and social life came more and more fully under the influence of the supreme end of man, the vision of God in Three Divine Persons.

Accordingly, Catholic Social Order, viewed as a whole, is not primarily the political and social organization of society. It is primarily the supernatural social organism of the Church, and then, secondarily, the temporal or natural social order resulting from the influence of Catholic doctrine on politics and economics and from the embodiment of that influence in social institutions. If instead of Catholic Social Order we use the wider but more convenient expression of Kingdom of God, we may say that the Kingdom of God on earth is in its essence the Church, but, in its integrity, comprises the Church and the temporal social order which the influence of the Church upon the world is every striving to bring into existence. Needless to say, while the general principles of social order remain always the same, social structures will present great differences at different epochs. No particular temporal social order will ever realize all that the Church is capable of giving to the world. The theology of history must include, then, primarily, the study of the foundation and development of the Church, and secondarily, the examination of the ebb and flow of the world’s acceptance of the Church’s supernatural mission.

Father Fahey, in praising the Thirteenth Century as the apogee of the Divine Plan that God Himself had instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, acknowledged the flaws that existed even in this most Catholic of centuries:

The organization of the Europe of the thirteenth century furnishes us with one concrete realization of the Divine Plan. It is hardly necessary to add that there were then to be seen defects in the working of the Divine Plan, due to the character of fallen man, as well as an imperfect mastery of physical nature. Yet, withal, the formal principle of ordered social organisation in the world, the supremacy of the Mystical Body, was grasped and, in the main, accepted. The Lutheran revolt, prepared by the cult of pagan antiquity at the Renaissance, and by the favour enjoyed by the Nominalist philosophical theories, led to the rupture of that order." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, p. 10.)

 

Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XI noted the flaws that existed during Christendom in their respective first encyclical letters, stating that it was nevertheless the case that men had the sure guidance offered by Holy Mother Church and relied upon her sanctifying offices to get them home to Heaven safely as they pursued the common temporal good in light of their own Last End:

When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

With the weakening of faith in God and in Jesus Christ, and the darkening in men's minds of the light of moral principles, there disappeared the indispensable foundation of the stability and quiet of that internal and external, private and public order, which alone can support and safeguard the prosperity of States.

It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's not-so-subtle attempt to paint traditionally-minded Catholics as people who have permitted themselves to be deceived by the "illusions of their own minds" as they "idolize" a past that really never existed is remarkable in its boldness as he attempts to twist the meaning of the world "idol" and "idolatry" to deflect attention from that he has esteemed the very symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands and that the Novus Ordo service, which he offered throughout his pilgrimage to France and which he claimed in his homily of September 13, 2008, is the means to rebel the worship of false idols, has actually incorporated pagan idols and idol worship into its very offerings on so many countless occasions, some of which Ratzinger/Benedict himself has presided over, including the travesty that took place during the pagan celebration known as "World Youth Day" nearly two months ago now.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict has some incredible chutzpah to imply that it is "idolatry" to seek to restore Christendom, an era that he believes has come and gone. Behold, my friends, the idolater of idolaters:

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI receives a copy of the Koran. He's all smiles, isn't he? (John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington, D.C., April 17, 2008.) He received another copy of what he called this "dear document" a few weeks later in the Vatican. Benedict receiving the Koran

Benedict initiated in a pagan ritual

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI , who called Mount Hiei in Japan, a place upon which Buddhists worship their devils, "sacred" last year (see No Such Thing as a Small Sacrilege), processing to the final "Mass" at World Youth Day, Randwick Racecourse, Sydney, Australia, Sunday, July 20, 2008. (The photograph was cropped to cover gross immodesty.)

  At the Park East Synagogue, New York, New York, Friday, April 18, 2008.

 

Perhaps a little refresher course offered by the late Bishop George Hay is in order at this point:

The spirit of Christ, which dictated the Holy Scriptures, and the spirit which animates and guides the Church of Christ, and teaches her all truth, is the same; and therefore in all ages her conduct on this point has been uniformly the same as what the Holy Scripture teaches. She has constantly forbidden her children to hold any communication, in religious matters, with those who are separated from her communion; and this she has sometimes done under the most severe penalties. In the apostolical canons, which are of very ancient standing, and for the most part handed down from the apostolical age, it is thus decreed: "If any bishop, or priest, or deacon, shall join in prayers with heretics, let him be suspended from Communion". (Can. 44)

Also, "If any clergyman or laic shall go into the synagogue of the Jews, or the meetings of heretics, to join in prayer with them, let him be deposed, and deprived of communion". (Can. 63) (Bishop George Hay, (The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)

 

No Catholic can participate in the esteeming of the symbols of false religions and incorporate pagan ritualism into what purports to be, albeit falsely, "Catholic" worship and remain a member of the Catholic Church in good standing. The Catholic Church can never sanction the blasphemy and sacrilege associated with making it appear as though false religions have "value" in the eyes of God and that it is not the duty of the Catholic Church to seek with urgency the unconditional conversion of those steeped in idol worship.

Echoing Bishop Hay's injunction written at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, Pope Pius XII told us nearly fifty-five years ago that it is impossible for the Catholic Church to change her approach to false religions:

Her deportment has not changed in the course of history, nor can it change whenever or wherever, under the most diversified forms, she is confronted with the choice: either incense for idols or blood for Christ. The place where you are now present, Eternal Rome, with the remains of a greatness that was and with the glorious memories of its martyrs, is the most eloquent witness to the answer of the Church. Incense was not burned before the idols, and Christian blood flowed and consecrated the ground. But the temples of the gods lie in the cold devastation of ruins howsoever majestic; while at the tombs of the martyrs the faithful of all nations and all tongues fervently repeat the ancient Creed of the Apostles. (Pope Pius XII, Ci Riesce, December 6, 1953.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believes in the false idol of a false religion, conciliarism, and he is bound and determined to tar anyone who opposes it as "idolizing" the "past" that is but an illusion of their own minds. Make no mistake about it, however, my friends, this is what all revolutionaries, both theological and social, do in order to convince people to suspend their exercise of reason and logic to embrace absurdities.

A Protestant "observer" at the "Second" Vatican Council wrote the following in the fourth volume of a set of books that he wrote on his "observations" at the events that took place before his very eyes:

Lectures by Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, and other progressives have been scheduled in a hall not far from St. Peters for the month of November. The Secretary General this morning said that he had asked whether these lectures were to be regarded as official or at least as authorized. He answered with a good, round unequivocal NO. Middle-of-the-road men such as he do not yet feel at home with the trailblazers. (Douglas Horton, Vatican Diary: 1965: A Protestant Observes the Fourth Session of Vatican Council II. Philadelphia and Boston: United Church Press, 1966, p. 144. It's amazing what one can find in a public library. My wife Sharon found this for me and was led to open the book to this exact page as I was in the process of writing this article. A librarian gave Sharon two volumes of the four volume set as the books were not selling at the library's weekly book sale.)

 

Ah, yes, the trailblazers. Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger were joined at the hip during the "Second" Vatican Council, seeking indeed to blaze a trail for others to follow, a trail that Ratzinger continues to blaze as Benedict XVI.

The Protestant Douglas Horton had written the following the role of the "periti," in whose ranks was counted one Father Joseph Ratzinger, in changing the schema of the "Second" Vatican Council in its first session:

One fear that had crept into my mind was scotched by this morning's discussion. I had thought that possibly the bishops were such busy men that they would not have kept up with modern scholarship and that in consequence they might adopt the proposed schema without thinking much about it. The expert consultants, many of them from divinity schools of the world, are of course familiar enough with the problem, but they have no votes. I had heard one of the bishops call the gallery in which these periti (or experts) sit, "the rebels' roost"--and I feared that we might not find many rebels among the bishops themselves. My apprehensions were proved groundless. (Douglas Horton, Vatican Diary: 1962: A Protestant Observes the First Session of Vatican Council II. Philadelphia and Boston: United Church Press, 1964, p. 114.)

 

Consider also the Protestant Mr. Horton's "observation" concerning the "council's" rejection of "traditio:"

So the day is over. As I look back upon it, I see it as one of the great moments of the council. Consider that one hundred years ago in the eightieth article of the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, the Roman church declared, "If anyone says that the Pope can and should be reconciled and make terms with progress, with liberalism and modernist civilization, let him be anathema." Today that same church, through this council, has opened the way for a declaration which begins, "In this present age there is an increasing awareness among men of the dignity of the human person. This dignity demands that man in his activity may enjoy his own judgment and freedom, so that he is impelled not by coercion but by consciousness of his own duties. this demand for freedom in human society should be applied most particularly to religious matters. The church, attentively considering these human longings, intends to show how much they are in agreement with truth and justice."

The giant called Rome, who has so long been asleep in the arms of the lady Traditio, is beginning to open his eyes. ((Douglas Horton, Vatican Diary: 1965: A Protestant Observes the Fourth Session of Vatican Council II. Philadelphia and Boston: United Church Press, 1966, p. 44.)

 

Pope Saint Pius X, writing in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, gave us the truth of this matter:

 

However, let not these priests be misled, in the maze of current opinions, by the miracles of a false Democracy. Let them not borrow from the Rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church and of the people, the high-flown phrases, full of promises; which are as high-sounding as unattainable. Let them be convinced that the social question and social science did not arise only yesterday; that the Church and the State, at all times and in happy concert, have raised up fruitful organizations to this end; that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by consenting to dubious alliances, does not have to free herself from the past; that all that is needed is to take up again, with the help of the true workers for a social restoration, the organisms which the Revolution shattered, and to adapt them, in the same Christian spirit that inspired them, to the new environment arising from the material development of today’s society. Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.

 

Any questions about who is the real idolater out there?

Today, September 17, 2008, is the Feast of the Impression of the Stigma on the holy body of Saint Francis of Assisi, whose principal feast day we will celebrate in seventeen days, Saturday, October 4, 2008. Saint Francis of Assisi, born as Giovanni di Bernardone, conformed himself to the austere poverty of the Holy Family and took up himself most severe penances to make reparation for his own sins and those of the whole world, spending long hours in prayer prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel of the town of Portiuncula. He spent himself physically for the Faith as he considered it a blessing to be spat upon, insulted, beaten up by thieves, rejected, at least for a time, by his own father, and a consider a "little madman" by many of the acquaintances with whom he once partied so cavalierly prior to his interior conversion.

We must pray to Saint Francis of Assisi, who bore the brand marks of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on his holy body, to help us to accept whatever insults that come our way for remaining steadfast in our commitment to the Catholic Faith without making even the tiniest of concessions to the counterfeit church of conciliarism or doing anything in any way that lends even the slightest bit of legitimacy to the spiritual robber barons who dare to pose as its "popes" and "bishops" as a revolution that has devastated so many millions of souls continues unabated and is apologized for in the strongest terms by one of its progenitors and apologists, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. No concessions to apostasy. No excuses for blasphemy. No participation in sacrilege. We must cleave only to those shepherds in our Catholic catacombs who understand the truth of our ecclesiastical situation, considering our privilege to utter the words that Saint Francis himself uttered whenever he was insulted or spat upon or beaten up: DEO GRATIAS!

Consecrated to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, may we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, seeking to be more and more detached from the spirit of the world, the flesh and the devil as we become more and more attached to the Cross of the Divine Redeemer, at Whose immemorial Sacrifice we have the privilege of assisting every day until the day we die.

It is not to live in the past to seek the restoration of Catholicism as the one and only foundation of personal and social order. It is the same kind of fidelity that moved Saint Francis of Assisi to seek the restoration of the Church in his own day at a time of clerical corruption. We, living in a time of apostasy and betrayal and blasphemy and sacrilege, must beg Saint Francis of Assisi to help us to be ever more reliant upon the Mother of God, to whom he himself was so tenderly devoted, as we plant a few seeds for the day upon which the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart is made manifest and all men everywhere will exclaim:

Viva Cristo Rey!

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints